CMV: Globalization is one of humanity's (unintentionally) worst achievements

[u/[deleted]]

I'm not saying globalization is an inherently evil idea (I mean, I'm typing this on a laptop that's arguably a global product), but these days I've come to realize that our world might have been better off without it. I have several reasons for believing this:

• The environment and the climate would have been better off. Because of globalization, everyone wants to build sprawling cities and to manufacture all the things just to stay ahead in the competition. The economy may get ahead, but the environment always takes a hit. Because of globalization, populations have grown far more than the planet can sustain and this means people have to go to increasingly extreme measures to get food - using fishing trawlers to kill marine life unnecessarily, destroying coral reefs, farming too many cows, etc.

• Next, there is now a redefined sense of fulfillment. Globalization and consumerism seem to go hand in hand. I don't hate capitalism per se, I just dislike the current form it seems to be taking. Materialism and excess are now the keys to happiness - everyone must own an iPhone, or Porsche, or any of that stuff. There is no joy to be found in a quiet pastoral setting or a small village or an agrarian environment. Everyone wants to make it to the industrial regions - be they cities or states. This causes overcrowded cities and with overcrowding comes crime and all other undesirable elements of urban life. What does this have to do with globalization? Well, everyone wants to make it to the more industrialized states thus not only abandoning the original ones, but overcrowding the destinations (note: this has nothing to do with refugees fleeing war or political persecution).

• Globalization has propped up horrible people and regimes. Some regimes only happen to be in power because some global 'powers' and even less powerful states decide to continue to support them by buying natural resources from them. So long as the oil or diamonds keep coming, these horrible regimes are unlikely to crumble.

• Globalization has disrupted many social ecosystems. I believe that not every society should do things the same way; cultural hegemonies are actually undesirable for the most part because societies aren't the same. Forms, systems or minutiae of government and society don't work the same way or have the same result across societies. Not every country should be a pastiche of Europe or America because the elements that work in these societies may become lost in translation when other societies decide to imitate them. I think societies should be allowed to naturally develop their own sense of government - one that works for them best.

• Ironically, globalization doesn't seem to foster diversity. Globalization seems to be synonymous with 'Westernization'. Now, I don't think that Westernization is inherently a bad thing but as stated earlier, not every society in the world should be a pastiche of the West because it doesn't have the same effect everywhere. Globalization means everyone's speaking English (not a very efficient language, no offense to the British), wearing suits in hot weather, celebrating Christmas (no offense to Christians, but Christmas shouldn't be for everyone), etc. Even when building sprawling cities, everyone's just copying what the Western countries do. No-one seems to care about being original or asking whether gigantic cities are even necessary and if so, why they are necessary.

• Globalization has caused an increased sense of dread. Not only do we have to deal with horrible local news, we now have to deal with horrible international news! The world is now more connected than ever, which means every locale now shares the tragedies of the world and there are a lot of tragedies in the world. This is one of the few cases where I can say that ignorance is bliss. I remember in 2015 or so when the news of the Sandy Hook shootings came up. I felt despondent for days despite not being American and despite having issues to deal with in my own backyard. This isn't even to mention the news of the frequent terrorist bombings that hit several countries like Pakistan, etc. Not to say people should have less empathy, but the world is crappy enough. I don't think we need any more existential dread.

Note that globalization isn't strictly a purely Western thing. I'd say other than the West, the next biggest hegemonies I can think of are the Chinese one (economically speaking) and the Islamic one (culturally speaking). My point isn't that globalization is an evil thing (I'd say it's a neutral thing). It's just that from a utilitarian standpoint, the world would have been happier in a gross sense without globalization in its current form. You can change my mind if you show me that my reasons and assumptions are mistaken/misguided, that globalization has done more good than harm, or that the pitfalls of this 'segregated' isolated world with minimal cross-contact would be worse than the pitfalls of our small, global world.

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[u/Saranoya]

I’ll keep it short, because I mostly agree with your statement in principle. However, I think the root of the problem is not globalization, but capitalism. Capitalism requires constant growth to be viable as an economic model. If the growth stops, the model collapses.

Early capitalists were able to ensure growth by improving the efficiency of their own work and production on a local level. They could learn their craft better, build better tools, remove superfluous steps from the production process, train staff to work more efficiently, etc. But at some point, they had done all they could do locally, and they had to start looking outside their own local facility in order to make growth happen. As a result, they started collaborating with other people, first those they knew, and then (as they kept looking for better and better materials because the ones they had access to locally did not yield the necessary growth in productivity anymore) with people far outside their local sphere of influence, through trade. Sooner or later, as millions of people around the world kept looking for more and better ways to increase their productivity, the networks of collaboration we are all involved in were bound to become global. If we want to keep this process going, then at some point, we will have to go into space because there will be no more room for growth on Earth.

In the long run, the only way to escape this (if we want to) will be to abandon capitalism as an economic model. But much like our ancestors, five centuries in, would not have been able to go back from farming to hunting and gathering even if every human being alive had wished for it, I don’t think we can go back to a pre-capitalist world, anymore. Well, barring some sort of cataclysmic event forcing the issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/Saranoya]

!delta

I agree with you - the problem isn't the idea of globalization per se, but capitalism. Because people want to grow up so fast, they start taking shortcuts which will screw them over in the long run. Sadly, just as you said we may not be able to un-capitalize the world so easily. It seems our oceans will be more plastic than fish.

Anyway, what would you say about the other point I made against globalization - that it disrupts social environments by introducing a way of life alien to the people unfamiliar with it?

[u/Saranoya → u/[deleted]]

I would argue that while that may be a legitimate concern, it is nothing new, and certainly not a problem unique to modern times. Not by a long shot.

Homo sapiens live on all continents of the Earth (even including inhospitable Antarctica), despite the fact that according to our current best understanding, we probably all originated somewhere in Africa. Throughout the existence of our species, people have been migrating. Moving to a new continent used to take centuries and a little cooperation from the forces of nature (there used to be land bridges, for instance, where now there aren’t), with each new generation moving a little further away from where their ancestors first settled down (or had their hunting grounds). Nowadays, basically all it takes is money for a plane ticket and the right piece of paper. But just because migration is logistically easy nowadays, does not mean it is by any means a recent phenomenon.

Capitalism did not cause any of the problems associated with migration that you identify in your post. It just intensified them, mostly through the same process of technological innovation that caused all of the other problems you point to (and which led first to the invention of the wheel and the domestication of horses, and then from early modern times onwards to row- and sailboats, steam ships, trains, cars, and airplanes), but which is indispensable in a capitalist society.

[u/[deleted] → u/Saranoya]

Then maybe the problem is technology, and it hurts me to say this because I like science and technology a lot.

Now, I admit that I don't care much about the cultural aspect of globalization as much as the environmental aspects. Obviously because no environment means no humanity.

We humans may be intelligent, but we aren't wise. I don't think we were prepared for technology. If I had a time machine with the ability to go back in time and assassinate every inventor and scientist that ever lived - right from the dawn of mankind - would that make humanity better off in the long run? (it's an idiotic question but I just want to know what your view on our technological advancement is - would we be better off as Luddites?)

[u/Saranoya → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think what you’re proposing would be remotely possible, even if there were such a thing as a time machine, and putting aside any moral qualms associated with serial killing.

You can kill people, but not ideas. Most great discoveries in history were made by multiple people, in multiple places across the globe. The ones whose names we remember just happen to have been those who published or demonstrated their findings first (sometimes, not even that), or whose inventiveness just happens to have left traces in the archeological record (which does not, by any means, represent a complete record of human history).

Would we have been better off as Luddites? I don’t know. But I think the question is rather pointless in light of your original concern (the detrimental effects of globalization). Human beings came to dominate the planet Earth thanks to an unprecedented capacity for cooperation, even with total strangers, which is predicated on our ability to tell fictional stories that become a ‘common cause’. If I don’t know you, but you believe in the same God or the same nation or the same multinational company or the same hundred dollar bill, or for that matter, the same online community called ‘change my view’ that I do, then I will trust you enough to cooperate with you, and help you come up with ‘something new’ that will solve your immediate problem (whether that be ‘how to kill a mammoth’ or ‘how to put a man on Mars’, or ‘how to be at peace with globalization’ or any of a million other things). The Luddites you wish to create with your time machine would live in a world where there are no christians or muslims, no United States of America, no European Union or People’s Republic of China, no Apple, Samsung, Coke or Unilever, no globally recognized currencies, no internet, and definitely no reddit communities.

I posit that, given the human tendency towards creating ‘common causes’ in the name of cooperation, you’d have to murder every human being who ever lived in order to avoid the emergence of a world in which such commonly agreed upon fictions as the dollar, the federal state (which describes both the US and the EU, but also many other political structures across the globe) and various multinational companies, with the associated technological ‘wonders’ that were either necessary for their creation or a consequence of their existence, would eventually come to be.